"Wordless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gleam through a crack in the roof above his cot. Once again there came the thought of God, and a feeling of gratitude for this lovely friendship in his life. If he knew where God was he would like to thank Him. Lying so and looking up to the star he breathed from his heart a wordless thanksgiving. ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... made haste first of all to catch the eye of our waiter, who was also the proprietor of the little inn. I pressed a wordless plea into his hand. "We are eccentric," I murmured in explanation, "and you must look well to ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... that with which he had begun his own mad dance; and as they moved, gradually widening their circles until they were strung out all along the face of the motionless regiments, they hummed a low, weird, wordless song that was somehow inexpressibly suggestive of vague, nameless horror. As for Machenga, after watching his assistants for a minute or two, he stalked slowly toward the king and seated himself at His Majesty's feet, where, after a time, he seemed to lose all consciousness of outward ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... winning smile. He recognized Leslie's ribbon, and noted the wondrous beauty of the small white face, now slowly flushing the faintest pink with excitement. Still clinging she smiled back. Wordless, Douglas reached over to pick up the doll. Then the right ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... idea of many specific vibrations, and interpret them: a boy's chuckle, a man's "Whew!" of surprise, the "Hem!" of annoyance or perplexity, the moan of pain, a scream, a whisper, a rasp, a sob, a choke, and a gasp. The utterances of animals, though wordless, are eloquent to me—the cat's purr, its mew, its angry, jerky, scolding spit; the dog's bow-wow of warning or of joyous welcome, its yelp of despair, and its contented snore; the cow's moo; a monkey's chatter; the snort of a horse; the lion's roar, and the terrible snarl of the tiger. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... through my feet. The rough stone on which my toes sank had been covered with metal and I smelled scorching flesh, jerking up my feet with a wordless snarl of rage and fury, hanging in agony by ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... paradise in a remote morning of creation ran the simple path by which their hearts visited each other. Those marks of their constant tread have not been effaced though their kinship has been long forgotten. Yet suddenly in some wordless music the dim memory wakes up and the beast gazes into the man's face with a tender trust, and the man looks down into its eyes with amused affection. It seems that the two friends meet masked and vaguely know each other ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... still the viols are playing That grand old wordless rhyme; And still those two ate swaying In perfect tune and time. If the great bassoons that mutter, If the clarinets that blow, Were given a voice to utter The secret ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... dying Have thought they heard one pray 110 Wordless, urgent; and replying One seem to say him nay: And watchers by the dead have heard A windy swell from miles away, With sobs and screams, but not a word Distinct for them to say: And watchers out at sea have caught Glimpse of a pale gleam ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... Otherwise, two things he presently noticed, while forging pluckily ahead, must have sent him headlong back to the comparative safety of his tent, instead of only making his hands close more tightly upon the rifle stock, while his heart, trained for the Wee Kirk, sent a wordless prayer winging its way to heaven. Both tracks, he saw, had undergone a change, and this change, so far as it concerned the footsteps of the man, was in some ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... faintly with red and blue. It seemed as if all gross and heavy bodies had sunk down in the heat motionless and lay huddled upon the ground, but their voices went wavering from them as if they were flames lolling from the thick waxen bodies of candles. Voices. Yes, voices. Wordless voices, breaking the silence suddenly with such depth of contentment, such passion of desire, or, in the voices of children, such freshness of surprise; breaking the silence? But there was no silence; all the ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... from the chaise. And, while I stood there, the Postilion came with two white-faced ostlers, who, between them, bore a heavy burden through the crowd, stumbling awkwardly as they went; and, as men saw that which they carried, there came a low, deep sound —wordless, inarticulate, yet full of menace. But, above this murmur rose a voice, and I saw the Postilion push his way to the steps of the inn, and turn there, with hands clenched ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... this time silent and wordless and literally tooth and nail. Their extended hands with fingers stiffly crooked, caught wildly at all in their way, scratching and tearing. The red ribbon and the chenille net worn by the brunette were torn off; the waist of her dress ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... undisturbed. When he had saluted the Ironside with royal courtesy, he met his sword as though he were beginning a practising bout with his foster-brother. Smoothly, evenly, without haste or fury, the blades began to sing their wordless song ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... of the doctor with Joyce in such intimate circumstances—latterly made more so by the frequent drives—had caused Honor's heart to twist with sudden anguish; for it was difficult to forget the day at his bungalow when he had fought for her life and called her the bravest girl he knew. A wordless sympathy had grown up between them since that day. His eyes had held for her a special message. Though he was "not seeking her for a wife" she felt that he had liked her more than a ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... sunrise; He was hope and courage like a sunlit morning in spring. He was adventure for ever, and His courage and adventure flowed into and submerged and possessed the being of the man who beheld him. And this presence of God stood over the bishop, and seemed to speak to him in a wordless speech. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... herself prone on the rough pine box; or the wild, wordless wail of sudden widowhood was torn from the inmost heart of some stricken creature ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... brave little girl!" he exclaims, with tremulous delight. Then the eyes of the two men meet in a long glance. A wordless question is asked, a subtile understanding is vouchsafed. Floyd Grandon is amazed, and a curious thrill speeds through every pulse. He is too young for ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... sweetness of his magic verse Will mock the envious years for centuries! Since youth, on hearing them, for glory burns, The wordless sorrow comfort in them sees, And careless ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... come, ye spirits girt with light That falls o'er heaven's hills from dawn to be; Ye warders in the planet house of night, Gliding to unguessed doors with prophet key, And out where dim paths stir with minstrelsy Wordless and strange to man until your clear Doubt-shriven strain interprets to the clay. Oh, might I hear ye as the world shall hear, Nearer, a poet's journey, to ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... Mr Helder was bowing over Claire's hand, and professing his delight. The little group in the corner were pressing forward to obtain a point of vantage, and throughout the company in general was passing a wordless hum of excitement. Mr Helder was seating himself at the piano, a girl in a white dress had ascended the impromptu platform and now stood by his side, a pretty girl, a very pretty girl, a girl who acknowledged the ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a humbler level, and assuming that some merely express the views of the public, they are serviceable, since the opinions of the world at large are almost wordless, and the author or player unguided save by those immediately around him, and unable to learn more of the public ideas concerning a play or performance than is shown by inarticulate noises and by good or bad houses, would remain ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... operator, one close-mouthed and of a virtuous taciturnity, sat up all night with Senator Hanway in his study—the night before the caucus. There was none present but Senator Hanway and the wordless telegraphic one; the former, deeming the occasion one proper for that cautious rite, drew ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... souls among those who love harmony, to understand and accept its meaning. She could not play or sing; she looked often in the dog's eyes, wondering if its soul felt as dumb and full as hers; but she could not sing. If she could, what a story she would have told in a wordless way to this man who was coming! All she could do to show that he was welcome was to make crackers. Cooking is a sensual, grovelling utterance of feeling, you think? Yet, considering the drift of most women's lives, one fancies that as pure and deep love ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... rising, and signaling some wordless message to Margaret that required dimples, widened eyes, compressed lips, and an expression of utter secrecy. "Supper's ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... bursting with happiness as she clung to him. Here, in the home she had prepared, he had brought her his success, and their love glorified both. Her emotion left her wordless. Another moment, and his eyes ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... jealous quails or village-cocks inspect Each other's necks with stiffen'd plumes erect; Smit with the wordless eloquence, they know The rival passion of the threatening foe. So when the famish'd wolves at midnight howl, Fell serpents hiss, or fierce hyenas growl; Indignant Lions rear their bristling mail, And lash ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... we see the town And the summer sun a slipping down, And the maple in the hazel glade Throws down the path a longer shade, And the hills are growing brown; To-ring, to-rang, to-ringleringle, By threes and fours and single The cows are coming home; The same sweet sound of wordless psalm, The same sweet June-day rest and calm, The same sweet scent of bud and balm, When ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... ones each he has caught to his breast, And clasped them, and kissed them with fervent caress; Then wordless and tearless, with hearts running o'er, They part who have never been parted before: He springs to his saddle,—the rein is drawn tight,— And Beechenbrook Cottage is lost to ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... stability to the warmth and uprightness of heart that were already his. Harry Denvil's present need was for a tacit wiping out of the past, an unquestioning trust in regard to the future; and his Captain, after the wordless manner of men, gave him full assurance of both. It is just this power to draw out the best and strongest by the simple habit of taking it for granted that marks the true leader; the man who compels because he never insists; ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... lectured his friends as he had lectured his youths, and treated grown-up men of the world as if they were children. In due course I visited Oxford to give my entertainments—"Humours of Parliament" first; "America in a Hurry" followed a few years afterwards. In the latter I gave a wordless imitation of that eccentric American, Talmage, at the same time carefully pointing out to my audience that I imitated his gestures and voice—not Talmage in the character of a preacher, but as a showman; I was therefore surprised to receive the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... from the string that suspended it around her neck. The boy suddenly was a demon, flying at his father with fists and teeth. It lasted only a second or two. The father kicked him into a corner where he lay, still glaring, wordless and dry-eyed. The mother had not moved; her husband's handmark was still red on her face when he hulked out, ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... froze the blood in his veins. He had heard the scream of every beast of the great forests, but never a scream like that which came from Mercer's lips now. It was not the cry of a man. To Kent it was the voice of a fiend, a devil. It did not call for help. It was wordless. And as the horrible sound issued from Mercer's mouth he could see the swelling throat and bulging eyes that accompanied the effort. They made him think of ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... snatched from its pegs. At a long, easy lope he ran along the path which carried across the face of the ravine. His moccasined feet made no sound. He saw no one in the creek bed or at the long turn. But new, there came a loud, wordless cry which he knew was meant for him. It was ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... we wearily sigh for, All of the future for which our hearts long, All Love would live for, and all Love would die for Wordless, you weave ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... came up through the purple gloom of the moorland, the stars' brilliancy silvering her—waiting—yielding in pallid silence to his arms, crushed in them, looking into his eyes, dumb, wordless. ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... cry. But he had not gone far when another cry was heard—not the cry of a woman this time, but the shorter, shriller, piercing yell of a man at the point of death—some deadly terror at his throat, choking him. Mixed with this came also unearthly, wordless, inhuman howlings, as of a wild beast triumphing. For a dozen seconds these sounds dominated the night. Then upon the hill they seemed to sink into a moaning, and a long, low cry, like the whining of a beaten dog. Lights gleamed about the farm, ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... of the Father. So she contented herself with a supplication which, under the circumstances, was the best she could have offered. She did not even try to form her petitions into words—the depths in which her soul lay were too deep for that; it was a wordless cry which went up to God. But its substance was an entreaty that the Father would do His will, and would bend her will to it; that whatever He saw fit to give her, He would always give His presence and His love; that whatever He was pleased to take away, ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... commanding the foredeck look-out, keeping it awake and its units from quarreling. The rest of us found no joy in life, and not too much hope even when Fred's concertina lifted the refrain of missionary hymn-tunes that even the porters knew, and most of us sang, the porters humming wordless melancholy through their noses. (When that happened Lady Saffren Waldon's scorn was something the arch-priests of Babylon would have paid ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... dawdling in talk and breathing happily the June-scented air. The stolid man and his placid wife who had sat near the rear had already started for the Colonel's house, following the foot-path across the fields. They walked silently side by side, as if long used to wordless companionship. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... suddenly lifted, And beauty came like the setting sun. My heart was shaken with tears and horror Drifted away ... O but every one Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... other nature yours than of a child Whose dumbness finds a voice mighty to call, In wordless pity, to the souls of all, Whose lives I turn to profit, and whose mute And constant friendship links the man ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... it was wordless rage. He dismounted and made his way up to the lamed horse; Gloria, from where she lay, thought at first that of course he was coming to her. But he kept his back to her as he lifted the horse's fore-leg ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... love was. She closed her eyes and buried her face in her arms in wordless, silent grief for the man to whom she had given all that was best and noblest of her—Hugh! But she could not weep. It seemed as though, long since, the fountains of her misery were dry. For a long while she crouched in the window, motionless, ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... each day with the thought that when he reached the crest of old Falkner's lower shoulder, where his lynx trap was set, and beheld the unspeakable strength and purity of the far-flung ranges, to whose vastness the Lost Chief peaks were but foothills, he would find a wordless peace. ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... and a drowsy consciousness returned, memory and reason being still partly in abeyance. His heavy, half-closed eyes rested on darkness. A crooning sound was in his ear,—a nursery lullaby, wordless but soothing. Where was he? Had he been ill? Was he in his cradle at home? Was Salome sitting by to watch him and give him his medicine? Yes, very ill he was, but would be better in the morning; and meanwhile he would be a good boy, and not cry and make ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... from the depths of her soul—a wordless invocation. She is close to the jungle now, and the pleasant shade of the ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... ludicrous, and the time for my presentation had passed. Thereupon he fell, with furious abuse, upon the English, and particularly English women. But I presented the chain to him later, and that day closed for us both with a wordless content, so full was he ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... corpulence of the modern compromise, that is at once cosy and cruel. For there is really in our world to-day the colour and silence of the cushioned divan; and that sense of palace within palace and garden within garden which makes the rich irresponsibility of the East. Have we not already the wordless dance, the wineless banquet, and all that strange unchristian conception of luxury without laughter? Are we not already in an evil Arabian Nights, and walking the nightmare cities of an invisible despot? Does not our hangman strangle secretly, the bearer of the bow string? Are ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... sang all the time she worked, and the gay, pretty, wordless songs floated across the water and across the fields, and woke some old people in their beds as they lay with their windows open, and they turned and crossed themselves, and said, "Dear heart!—this is the eve of the Ascension, and the angels are so ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... were occupied in undoing the package that they had put down near the painted case. Weighed down with wordless horror, Morhange and I ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... off and gazing wordless for a moment at this new son of his, this man he had never seen, in his captain's uniform with bits of ribbon on the breast of it,—tried to say how proud he was and choked instead, it was for Mary ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... toward his apartments, the alarming alternative proposed by the merchant repeated itself with a sort of wordless insistence: ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... milk run out to Saturn would have its brighter side," Frank muttered to Tom when he came back inside the ship. Tom grinned at him in wordless understanding. ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... the stringent, sparkling wintry stars grow mild and liquid, shining with a tremulous and tender light; the whole world seems larger, happier, more full of untold, untried possibilities. The air vibrates with wordless promises, calls, messages, beckonings; and fairy-tales are told by all ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... uneasy over his son's silence; he would rather have had stormy argument than a wordless acceptance of the situation. Chaffering in these sorts of bargains means that a man can look after his interests. "A man who is ready to pay you anything you ask will pay nothing," old Sechard was saying to himself. While he ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... of his wordless protests, the cook was dragged out of the kitchen and made to accompany the punchers to a place near the side of the house. And there the six men watched, each with his hand on his gun and with ears strained for the sound of a car. There was a road which ran past the ranch ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... a garment o'er me; Space all unmeasured, unrecorded time; While seen with inward eye moves on before me Thought's pictured train in wordless pantomime. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... loss of freedom they might experience hereafter, and gave unanimous consent. Upon receipt of which Sylvia felt inclined to dance about the three and bless them audibly, but restrained herself, and beamed upon them in a state of wordless gratitude pleasant to behold. Having given a rash consent, Mark now thought best to offer a few obstacles to enhance its value and try ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... was perhaps the look of him which she remembered best. By his side walked old Mavourneen, the wolf-hound, Brock's hand on the shaggy head. The two swung steadily toward her, Brock smiling into her eyes, holding her eyes with his, and as they were closer, she heard Mavourneen crying in wordless dumb joy, crying as she had not done since the day when Brock came home the last time. Above the sound Brock's voice spoke, every trick of inflection so familiar, so sweet, that the joy of it was sharp, ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... dream-land. I had never heard the phrase—I could not tell what was meant, nor whether my apprehension was true or false. I knew only that the night had taken her and the dawn denied her, and that, dream or no dream, I stood there with a pang of loss that even now leaves me wordless. ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... unworn joy of living Is not far to find,— Leave the bell and book and candle Of the world behind, In your coracle slow drifting, Without haste or plan, You shall catch the wordless music Of the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... loitering herd, grinned a wordless greeting. Andy passed with a casual wave of his hand and took his place on the left flank. From his face Weary guessed that all was well with the claims, and the assurance served to lighten his spirits. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... anywhere within the palazzo, save deep down in the heart of the Lady Fiorenza, who had never been one with her family in worldly ambitions; and far below the giddy current of the day's happenings ran the ceaseless flow of the mother's wordless prayer, enfolding her child—pleading that that which was to come to her should make and ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... among bright dreams, A child that once was mine Had whispered wordless love to him, And given ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... so I'm going to walk down to the water and look at Sir Richard's boat, and send off my card to him by a sailor or something. Then, if he's a good boy, he will turn up to-day, and then—!" The end of Anne's sentence was wordless ecstasy. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... whose racked eddies, far aloft, Above the murmur of the uneasy world, My thoughts in exultation held their way: Whose tremulous whispers through the rustling glade Were once to me unearthly tones of love, Joy without object, wordless music, stealing Through all my soul, until my pulse beat fast With aimless hope, and unexpressed desire— Thou sea, who wast to me a prophet deep Through all thy restless waves, and wasting shores, Of silent labour, ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... and wordless as ever, followed them with a proud smile till they entered the handsome suite of rooms which had been reserved for them. "There's nothing too good for Marshall Haney and his side-partner," ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the crucial hour was striking, and his prayer for help was the wordless outreaching of every atom of his consciousness for that One more powerful than weak humanity, to guide, ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... expected to discover such things for themselves. The religious interest had also the strongest domestic character in quite another sense from that of the family prayers which Dr Drummond was always enjoying. "Set your own house in order and then your own church" was a wordless working precept in Elgin. Threadbare carpet in the aisles was almost as personal a reproach as a hole under the dining-room table; and self-respect was barely possible to a congregation that sat in faded pews. The minister's gown even was the subject of scrutiny as the years went on. It was an expensive ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... much more banal comrade. Yes, he could keep it up now—that is he could hold out for his real reply, could meet the rather marked tension of the rest of their passage as well as she; he should be able somehow or other to make his wordless detachment, the tribute of his ostensibly deep consideration of her request, a retreat in good order. She was, for herself, to the last point of her guileless fatuity, Amy Evans and an asker for "lifts," a conceiver of twaddle both in herself and in him; or at least, so far as she fell short of ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... they're all different from sech folks as Silver Phil. Boggs, goin' to war, is full of good-humoured grandeur, gala and confident, ready to start or stop like a good hoss. Cherokee Hall is quiet an' wordless; he gets pale, but sharp an' deadly; an' his notion is to fight for a finish. Peets is haughty an' sooperior on the few o'casions when he onbends in battle, an' comports himse'f like a gent who fights downhill; ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... she sat with her face buried in her hands. She did not weep; tears were trivial before a destiny such as this. But groans and smothered cries often broke the silence of her solitude—cries of frenzied revolt, wordless curses. Once she rose up suddenly, passed through the middle room, and out on to the staircase; there a gap in the wall, guarded by iron railings breast-high, looked down upon the courtyard. She leaned forward over the bar and measured the distance ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... strikes up. Reflected glare means fever, so you try to edge a little farther out of it without disturbing anyone's feelings, explaining minutely why you are doing it, lest they should think your design is to covertly touch them; and then, their confidence won so far, you begin perhaps with the wordless book, or a lyric set to an Indian tune, or a picture of some parable—never of our Lord—or, oftener still, we find the best way is to open our Bibles, for they all respect a Sacred Book, and read something from it which we know they will understand. We generally find one or two women about ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... are many: and yet, O our Mother, Many years were we wordless and nought was our deed, But now the word flitteth from brother to brother: We have furrowed the acres ...
— Chants for Socialists • William Morris
... First-Reader Class had welcomed him. Left to his own devices, he had promptly laid his arms upon his desk and his head upon his arms. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Isidore's brilliant head still rested on his folded arms and Teacher felt that she must make some effort to comfort his wordless misery. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... smile when she saw Hansie on the scenes once more, the people crowding round her with their questions. Why did she come back? Was she going to stay? Didn't she go to Pretoria yesterday? Who was that with her? etc. Mothers pulled her aside and pointed in wordless grief to their tents, to what lay there in still repose since last night. Children clung to her skirts—"We thought you ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... notes of the humoreske coming down into the deserted street and stood still to listen. The memories of the perfect summer floated around him again. Something in the music seemed to call to him, to plead with him, to try to console and cheer him with a wonderful, playful tenderness like the pure wordless sympathy ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... of a freer world. Unaccountably, perhaps, and close upon some space of unusually frequent intercourse— some congeries of rather exciting little circumstances, whose natural sequel would rather seem to be the quickening than the suspension of communication—there falls a stilly pause, a wordless silence, a long blank of oblivion. Unbroken always is this blank; alike entire and unexplained. The letter, the message once frequent, are cut off; the visit, formerly periodical, ceases to occur; the book, paper, or other token that indicated remembrance, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... was palpable and dear, Not abstract nor remote, with cordial strength Enclasped as by a heart; through every Heart Serene affections swam 'mid seas of light, Reason's translucent empire without bound, Fountained from God. Silent those listeners sat Parleying in wordless thought. For them the world Was lost—and won; its sensuous aspects quenched; Its heavenly import grasped. The erroneous Past Lay like a shrivelled scroll before their feet; And sweet as some immeasurable rose, Expanding leaf on leaf, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... the Ice closed in.... One day the men of our tiny clearing were but a score. We huddled about our dying fire of bones and stray logs. We said nothing. We just sat, in deep, wordless, thoughtless silence. We were the ...
— The Coming of the Ice • G. Peyton Wertenbaker
... to Miss Bruce-Drummond who had met up with them for a week-end at Stirling, "those poor children are so pitifully what Gelett Burgess calls 'the gagged and wordless folk'; it would be so much easier—and safer—for them if they belonged to his 'caste ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... The wordless cry of affright came from Mrs. Carl Walraven. Dr. Oleander stood paralyzed, his eyes starting from their sockets, his face like the face of a ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... Plage twinkled gaily to them from its string of lights on esplanade and summer villas; Cap Grisnez flashed its calm white light of guardianship; Calais town sent a message of kindly greeting from the far distance; only the Varne Sands whispered a wordless warning as they swirled the waters above them and sent a flock of shivering wavelets to beat against the ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... Woman's gift, this failure of herself must cease now that peace has come!" The cry broke wordless from me. I understood the reality of my fear. I knew the peril to the future. It is the problem of unstable woman, clamorous and devouring, that cries aloud ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... occasions to such an extent as to transcend Tennyson's idea of the law "broadening from precedent to precedent" and to amount to something strongly resembling a juridical revolution, bloodless but not wordless. ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... shops there was a high brick building, a concert-hall. You could hear the soft, dreamy air floating down from it, made vocal into a wordless love and pathos. Adam forgot the splendors of the window, listening; his heart throbbed full under his thin coat; it ached with an infinite tenderness. The poor old cobbler's eyes filled with tears: he could have taken Jesus and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... disregard them now, uninfluenced by their varying moods. He watched them in sunlight when they were all shining white and violet and soft purple, with great shadows spread over their slopes where the forests stood deepest; and they heartened him, gave him a wordless promise that better times were to come. He saw them swathed with clouds, and felt the chill of their cold aloofness; the world was a gloomy place then, and friendship was all false and love a mockery. He saw them at night—then was he an outcast from ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... shall at length I see Pure daybreak lighten again on Eden's tree? Loosed from remorse and hope and love's distress, Enrobe me again in my lost nakedness? No more with wordless grief a loved one grieve, But to Heaven's nothingness ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... it," Brion said, shrugging off the feeling of gloom. Telt's only answer was a wordless ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... vanished from the window-panes, all had gone except one, a woman who sat patiently, her eyes upon the floor, and her hands folded in her lap, until the footsteps of the last of the others to depart had ceased to sound upon the pavement below. Then, with a wordless exclamation, she sprang to her feet, pulled the window-shade carefully down to the sill, and, when she had done that, struck a match on the heel of her shoe—a soiled white canvas shoe, not a small one—and applied the flame to a gas jet. The yellow light flared up; and ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... unpleasant, for the girl whose aims, since they were no longer his, must be disappointed. He was sorry for Cynthia, and in his remorse he was fonder of her than he had ever been. He felt her magnanimity and clemency; he began to question, in that wordless deep of being where volition begins, whether it would not be paying a kind of duty to her if he took her at her word and tried to go back to Bessie Lynde. But for the present he did nothing but renounce all ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... there had come a wonderful event in the history of the company's post. A new life was born into the little cabin of Cummins and his wife. After this the silent, wordless worship of their people was filled with something very near to pathos. Cummins' wife was a mother! She was one of them now, an indissoluble part of their existence—a part of it as truly as the strange lights for ever hovering over the pole, as surely as the countless ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... a space, wordless, regarding her. His doubts and questionings had fled before her presence. He remembered the things that he had meant to say. He faced the cameras again and the light about him grew brighter. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... her husband's fame, Won in the fields of fruitful Italy; And decks with praises Collatine's high name, Made glorious by his manly chivalry With bruised arms and wreaths of victory: Her joy with heaved-up hand she doth express, And, wordless, so greets heaven ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... moment they stood staring at each other through the darkness, wordless, breathing hard. Their quick breath and the trickling of fifty runnels of water from Gavin's drenched clothes into the bottom of the once-tidy boat alone broke the tense stillness of ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Hamilton moved from the position he had steadily maintained before the doorway. He stepped to one side, and bowed formally to the three women, who rose promptly as they realized the significance of his action. Cicily, too, stood up, wordless in her suffering. For the moment, at least, her indomitable spirit was overwhelmed by this crowning misfortune, and she felt all her ambition hopelessly baffled. Through this last catastrophe, her benevolent scheming must be brought to nought. It was impossible ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... been in service Mrs. Bunting had always had a deep, wordless contempt for those of her fellow-servants who read their employers' private letters, and who furtively peeped into desks and cupboards in the hope, more vague than ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... groan, he knotted his fingers together and prayed the first real prayer his heart had ever uttered. It was wordless and formless, just an inarticulate cry for help in ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... a wordless lovesong, very low and terrible in the night alone before the door, and did not answer. Then she saw him go softly down the steps, look up and down the street, move guiltily across the yard, hiding behind a bush at a distant footfall, and slip slowly into the sidewalk and go hurrying ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... in that old ruined tower! Or hours like those during which I listened to tales of peril and adventure, or to the music that pealed forth from the distant corner, when Sir Adrian sat down to his organ and made it speak the wordless language of the soul: that language that made me at times shiver with a mad yearning for life, more life; at times soothed my heart with ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the sad effects or results of the enslaving Old Bailey fashion of defending, or, as we may well call it, apologizing for, Christianity,—introduced by Grotius and followed up by the modern 'Alogi', whose wordless, lifeless, spiritless, scheme of belief it alone suits,—that we dare not ask, whether the passage here referred to must necessarily be understood as asserting a miraculous remembrancing, distinctly sensible by the Apostles; whether the gift had any especial reference to ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... public places have learnt to do so in silence; and a table d'hote is a wordless function unless the inevitable Andalusian—he who takes the place of the Gascon in France—is present with his babble and his laugh, his fine opinion of himself, and his faculty for making a sacrifice of his own dignity at that over-rated ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... doubt, this wordless fascination would not have persisted. At that period of upgrowth when one is a lover of love, one sees love in every eye; the greedy and uncertain heart gathers it flitting from one to the other, and nothing forces it to settle down; the heart ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... Wheezing breath, wordless cries, grunts, strange laughter sounded. And, withal, the major's hands and arms in one of the pits made a dry, slithering slide and click as he kneaded, worked, and stirred the gems, dredged up fistfuls and let ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... the pity of it!" murmured Mr. Duffy. But the boy stood wordless, as the irresistible giant current caught the trusting birds and swept them, with a hideous, overpowering force, to the very brink of the Horseshoe Fall. The boy, thrilling with the horror of it, shut his eyes, and flung himself, face downward, on the rocks. A strange, ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... most avails the prayer of love, Which, wordless, shapes itself in needs, And wearies Heaven for ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... at the grey envelope a full three minutes. Mrs. Brace, wordless, showing no uneasiness as to the outcome, waited for ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... fled away, lest, in the turbulent whirl of life, the Curse should craze, and not slay her. For sleep had vanished with wordless moans and frighted aspect from her pillow,—or if it dared, standing afar off, to cast its pallid shadow there, still there was neither rest nor refreshing in the troubled spell. Nor could the thirst that consumed her quench itself with red wine or crystal water, translucent grapes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... such as I have whenever I stand before a certain sixteenth-century portrait in the National Gallery: a sense or an illusion of being in the presence of a living person with whom I am engaged in a wordless conversation, and who is revealing his inmost soul to me. And it is only the work of a genius that can ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... cried. And he saw, perplexed, that Adelaide had risen with a faint wordless cry, and was gazing at him as though she were puzzled and alarmed ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... forward but quickly checked myself; for Hamilton turned slowly towards me and instead of erect bearing, clear glance, firm mouth, I saw a head that was bowed, eyes that burned like fire, and parched, parted, wordless lips. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... was our wire barely discernible in the fog. The Major interrupted five wordless reveries by expressing, with what almost seemed regretfulness, the fact that in all his fighting experience he had never seen it "so damn quiet." His observation passed without a remark ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... his throat when he felt something give. Another effort—and in the powder-choked vault there rang out a thrilling cry of triumph. His hands were free! He reached forward to the fuse, and this time a moaning, wordless sob fell from him, faint, terrifying, with all the horror that might fill a human soul in its inarticulate note. He could not reach the fuse because of the thong about ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood |
